This Saturday, March 27, is Earth Hour, WWF’s attempt to have everyone turn off their lights for one hour to show solidarity with the plight of the planet and send a message to policy-makers that we care about climate change. We have seen the countless TV commercials on our 450 watt per hour flat screens and tweeted on our 200 watt per hour computers that by turning off our 6 watt bulbs for one hour, we will be judged good shepherds of the planet. I am not being asked to turn off my heating, my computer, TV or stop my Sunday laundry loads, so I think I can do it. This is the problem today – environmentalism has become a big cause made of little gestures and as long as I can pet myself with comforting reaffirmations of green virtue (things that save the planet), I can easily digest the contradictions.

What is the point of this one-hour exercise? A cynic would say that it is WWF’s attempt to flex its eco-bully muscle by getting the major landmarks to comply with their demands. I suspect the Sydney Opera House doesn’t have the stomach to take WWF on in a publicity smear campaign or to try to reason with them that it might use more energy overall to re-start their lighting system afterwards. Perhaps it is a show of strength to tell policy-makers that WWF represents everyone, so they had better listen. I think we are told every day that everyone agrees with the issue of climate change, so it cannot be that simple.

Or could the point of Earth Hour be an attempt to cement environmentalist solutions in response to our complex problems? We can save the planet if we just cut CO2. Simple step number one. And how do we do that? Just turn the lights out. Simple step number two. Like all religions, eco-theology provides answers that change the questions, refocus the mind and, most importantly, reassure the followers with hope and sanctity. Telling people they can be ecologically cleansed by turning off a light-bulb for an hour is like a fundamentalist preacher telling a drug addict that they only need to give everything up and follow God and their prayers will be answered.Fundamentalist religions attract their flocks with promises based on a certain selective denial of facts.

Environmental activists are growing their ranks and extending the length of their Sunday pews by not threatening their emerging flocks with sacrifices that might hit their cherished lifestyles. If they were to tell us the full extent of the changes that need to be made in order to save the planet and live sustainably, the eco-religion would surely not grow, collection baskets will not be filled and sermons would cause unease. Sugar-coating sermons with simplicity while reaffirming continued good lifestyle is what is making eco-theology the fastest growing religion on the planet and Earth Hour will be one magnificent global jamboree.

But is it so simple? Turning my six watt light-bulb off for 60 minutes won’t save much more than my self-satisfaction that I am a planet saver. Real changes are going to be a lot harder and entail much larger sacrifices, but we don’t want to talk about them (any more than we want to talk about our pension mess or our debt crisis). Most green arguments are blissfully non-threatening in their simplicity, and so long as we do not critically examine the facts, we too can attain a certain eco-reaffirmation (rapture).

Some examples:

We are told that we should drive electric cars or hybrids because we will reduce CO2 and attain a certain eco-proprietary from owning such a vehicle.This seems simple and plausible until we consider the amount of CO2 needed to make a battery-powered car with two engines (quite a lot more than a normal car) – studies are conflicting but a Hummer might actually be more eco-efficient. A real environmental commandment would be to not own a car and take the bus or bicycle (but who really would be attracted to that line?).

It is said that recycling is a morally righteous act and a means to be absolved of one’s sins of consumeristic weakness. While simple and attractive, the amount of energy and wastewater used to recycle most products into second-rate base materials is far more destructive than what we would get from just incinerating the waste and recovering the energy. Not something that reaffirms our eco-piety so we would rather not hear that. What we need to be told in a sugar-free manner is that we should be consuming less (much, much less) and reusing more. This comes across with the sweetness of lemons.

Crusaders don’t have much pity for the infidels and may not dare to recognise the effects of their eco-missionary zeal. Africa has suffered greatly from the simplicity of these solutions, whether it is the daily malarial death toll (Saint Rachel’s DDT decision still costs 3000 lives a day), the increased sanitation threats (reduction in the use of disinfectants like chlorine) or denial of advanced agricultural technologies (GMOs have been denied to poor farmers because, well, we in Europe don’t need them). We are told that eating organic is the way to real liberation of body and soul, but as Europe is only able to grow 4% of its crops organically (Eurostat), we have to look elsewhere for our nurturing succor. Fortunately, subsistent farmers in Africa have many large families with little hands eager to pull weeds and break off pest-ridden leaves for our communal pleasure.

These are very simple solutions to complex environmental problems, and so long as we can sugar-coat them in a non-threatening benediction of ecological purity and absolution, these movements will continue to grow. And policy-makers would be loathe to unleash the wrath of the brethren.

So I look forward to Earth Hour for a moment of calm meditation. I plan to reflect on the true meaning of the exercise. I believe it is to prepare us for the consequences of our green energy revolution.Yes, the true meaning of Earth Hour is to prepare us to deal with the coming energy shortages, scheduled brown-outs and long duration electricity cuts. This Saturday will indeed be a good time to reflect.

Comments

Perhaps it is time not only to turn out the lights for an hour but also for an hour-long global outcry by great numbers of people.

Many more people are going to have to speak out loudly, clearly and often about what is somehow true, as each of us sees what is real, so that the whole world can hear our voices. I do not believe that it is ever too late to do the right thing; but it is getting “late in the day” to make necessary changes away from soon to become patently unsustainable global human overproduction, overconsumption and overpopulation activities. Even though a colossal wreckage can be apprehended in the offing if silence prevails over speech-to-power, there is still enough daylight for us to see dimly that adequate space-time exists in which to move forward fast toward sustainability.

Everyone is going to have to speak out. In the last decade the collusion, corruption and cover-up of massive fraud in the global economy by greedy, self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us as well as their willful blindness and elective mutism in the face of the rampant dissipation of natural resources, relentless pollution of the environment and reckless degradation of Earth’s ecology is as unconscionable as it is unforgiveable. The fulmination of irresponsible leadership in the first decade of Century XXI gave rise to the cratering of the world’s political economy and to the irreversible destabilization of the Earth’s climate.

From 2000 to 2008, whatsoever was politically correct, economically expedient, socially convenient and culturally prescribed was automatically espoused loudly as “the truth”. Ideological idiocy prevailed over science. Greed ruled the world. Intellectual honesty, personal accountability, moral courage and doing the right thing were eschewed. Gag rules were enforced. As a consequence, the human community was persuaded to inadvertently make a colossal mess of our planetary home, Earth. Everyone could see what was happening, but few people were willing to speak out. No one with power listened to those who did speak out about what was observed occurring around us. Millions of people were encouraged to engage in conspicuous per-capita overconsumption and scandalous individual hoarding of resources; in megabillion-dollar pyramid schemes and unsustainable large-scale industrial enterprises.

Nothing can happen until many people speak truth to the greedmongers and power-hungry.

New leadership and a new direction such as the one presented by President Barack Obama need to be freely chosen and actively sustained.

What would you think about separating the games played in the financial system from the real economy and having the financial system overseen by a Gaming Commission of some sort? After all, the financial system has recently been operated as a gambling casino.

Do the financial markets look more like places for investing or gambling?

Would you agree that games are being played within the world’s political economy and the really BIG winners are the insiders who are gaming the global system by inventing and engineering the virulent spread of dodgy financial instruments and by engaging in greedmongering and cloaking all these pernicious activities as virtuous exercises of God’s will?

What we know thanks to well-established scientific knowledge about biological evolution as well as the finite and frangible physical world we are blessed to inhabit would lead sensible people, I suppose, to conclude that there is nothing or precious little that can be done to change the ‘trajectory’ of human civilization. So powerful is the force of evolution that we will “do what comes naturally” by continuing to overpopulate the planet and await the next phase of the evolutionary process. So colossal, reckless and relentless, too, is the unbridled expansion of the global political economy now overspreading the surface of Earth. Even so, still hope resides within that somehow humankind will make use of its singular intelligence and other unique attributes so as to escape the fate that appears ‘as if through a glass darkly’ in the offing, the seemingly certain fate evolution appears to have in store for us. Come what may. In the face of all the global ecological challenges that we can see now and here, I continue to believe and to hope that we find adequate ways of consciously, deliberately and effectively doing the right things, according the lights and the science we possess, the things that serve to confront and overcome the evolutionary trend which seems so irresistible. Perhaps others would comment on human agency, human population dynamics, endless economic growth and the potentially catastrophic consequences of the unrestricted overproduction, overconsumption and overpopulation activities of the human species on our watch.

Somehow we have to grasp much more adequately the sum and substance of our distinctly human nature, with special attention given to improving our ‘reality orientation’ with regard to such vital issues as human population dynamics. Although relatively small in number, evolutionary biologists and scientists in other fields of research understand what the best available science indicates to us about the skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population numbers in our time.Research of outstanding scientists indicate that the population dynamics of the human species is essentially similar to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species. We have uncontested, apparently unforeseen and unfortunately unwelcome scientific evidence regarding the ‘placement’ of the human species within the order of living things that is everywhere denied; whereas, preternatural theories (eg, Demographic Transition Theory), political ideologies (eg, Conservatism and Liberalism) and economic theologies (eg, neoclassical economics) are widely shared and consensually validated as somehow supported by science. To elect to extol the virtue of ideas that have been refuted by scientific research (evidence which is consciously and deliberately ignored, avoided and denied) cannot be construed as the right thing to do. Even though ‘political correctness’ is predominant and accepted as real, when theory, ideology and theology are directly contradicted by science, then science must be shared. Scientific knowledge must prevail over theory, ideology and theology.

David believes that hunger, AIDS and diseases like malaria are the real threats to humanity - not plastics, GMOs or pesticides. Also follow him in smaller doses (smaller poison) on the Risk-Monger FB page: www.facebook.com/riskmonger

About: The Risk-Monger

David Zaruk is the Risk-Monger. He has been an EU risk and science communications specialist since 2001, active in EU policy events from REACH and SCALE to the Pesticides Directive, from Science in Society questions to the use of the Precautionary Principle. He was part of the team that set up GreenFacts to encourage a wider use of evidence-based decision-making in the EU on environmental health matters. He is an adjunct professor at Vesalius College and Facultés Universitaires St-Louis where he lectures on Risk Communications, EU Lobbying, Corporate Communications and PR. He still does some consulting work at Risk Perception Management, but only for friends and he refuses the timesheet mentality that has made consulting into a mercenary-like profession. In the past, he has been employed by Solvay, Cefic and Burson-Marsteller, retiring from "active work" in 2006.

He is also a graduate, like most of us, from Google University, and while he is tempted to pretend to be an expert on everything he searches on, he believes that there are scholars who have spent years working to become experts in their fields whose views merit more value than the collective.

The views in this blog are his own - he never has and never will blog on behalf of a job or a paid project. Please do not complain to BlogActiv about any offensive Risk-Monger contribution - they support open-minded thinking. Send your complaint as a comment and the Risk-Monger will gladly publish it (with no more than two links though to avoid the spam filter).